Completed my 1st Build

[bigjon]

"About the difference in cost between buying the parts and building the PC yourself versus buying an already assembled PC, at first it may seem not worth it as it can cost you almost the same, but the next time you upgrade the cost savings starts to appear as you no longer have to buy certain parts, like the case, PSU, HDD/RAM, etc."

Yep. I agree that for low to mid level systems building is not any cheaper over the short run, I have done a 500 dollar test (I just put stuff in the cart) and the best I could build on 500 was about the same as buying. But for my about 1800 dollar rig (including OS and monitor) I would have paid about 2400 on HP and the one on HP had an older graphics card, locked CPU, and a few other things that make it worse than mine.

Another key thing is PSU, you almost never get a choice. When you assemble one through HP or Dell they select the bare minimum based on the parts you choose. Most parts they choose are not the best brands. They do same thing with MOBOs, if you put you want 8gb of ram they choose a mobo that caps you there, same with PCI-e slots, you are going to get an SLI board ever without actualy putting 2 GPUs on there

So yes as far as power power stats go my 500 build would = HP/Dell etc but mine would have more upgradeablity and quality within. Like I said itsnot even close on high end builds.